Wow. After yesterdays blog, Brett left a comment saying "It's amazing how someone can be a 'God-botherer' for merely being honest and open about their faith."

And what do you know, there's a new article today titled I wanted two God botherers named Kevin. Wow! Brett, you are right on the money. What makes him a God botherer? Well apparently he's a "God fearing" person. Shock horror.

Maybe I'm just overtly sensitive. But I don't think so.

Add A Comment Direct Link Tags: christian, media, god

Date: Thursday, November 26, 2009 13:13
User: Antonios
Comment: Christians in Australia are associated with power, privilege and conservatism.

Generally speaking, anyone or anything associated with power or privilege (and often conservatism, but not always) is given the boot.

Same thing about white middle-aged guys, for instance. There's nothing necessarily bad about them, but you're always gonna find more white, middle-aged men in positions of power, and for that reason they're also given the boot.

Another case in point: people make fun of Collingwood and Carlton, never North Melbourne for the same reason.

Date: Sunday, November 29, 2009 14:30
User: Brett Peatman
Comment: Wow, either I'm Psychic or the media is depressingly predictable.

Well, my long standing opinion is that Australia's media is extremely biased against christians. Read any article mentioning christians or christianity, and it will invariably be making fun of them of making them out to be stupid. Of course it's never done to Judaism, Islam or Hinduism. TheAge's stance is that "christians are wierd and don't belong in the public view".

Take for example, this article:

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/blogs/the-vulture/christians-worship-their-idols/20091123-it7o.html

Front page of the theage.com.au. It's quite a bizarre article. I mean, what's the point of it? It's actually very badly written - if it's an opinion piece then what's the writers opinion?

I think it's needlessly polarising people of different religions eg:

"- But unless all you atheists, agnostics and people of other faiths start watching and voting in droves, the Christians will be too."

erm what? This doesn't make sense at all. Why vote for people based on their religion? The writer even said that people don't do that. But then again, theage publishes Catherine Deveny. (However if you want to read an article by someone with a brain, either read anything by Waleed Aly or even better Barney Zwartz.)

But it's funny how christians are actually shown on Australian Idol and their comments aren't censored. It's so rare to hear anything about christianity whatsoever on TV these days! I think it's got to the point that when you do hear something, all of the non christians arc up!

Of course it's all due to ignorance because most Australians don't have a clue about christianity - a Sri Lankan whom I'm working with at the moment has a much better understanding than most Australians that I know. Religious Education in Australia is terrible (not funded, no national syllabus etc) and it's really starting to show.

Direct Link Tags: Christian Idol?

Date: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 16:01
User: Brett Peatman
Comment: It's amazing how someone can be a 'God-botherer' for merely being honest and open about their faith. It seems the thought police have a platform in The Age.

There's no easy way to say this other than you complete and total bastard.

Direct Link Tags: you complete and total bastard.

Date: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 10:24
User: Lj
Comment: Prick

Are there any Christian Metal bands in Australia?

I've done a quick google search and found the following:

* Mortification

* grave forsaken

* Fearscape

Any others?

Direct Link Tags: Australian Christian Metal bands??

Date: Monday, November 09, 2009 21:24
User: Bennet McLean
Comment: Here's some more bands tagged as Metal who played at this year's Black Stump.

* Dei Elithaeon

* InExordium

* Pergamum

* Synnove

* Those Who Endure

Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 10:59
User: Poks
Comment: Here are some more from the wikipedia site:

- Altera Enigma
- Lightforce
- Paramaecium
- Horde
- Virgin Black
- Kohllapse

Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 13:55
User: lach
Comment: Which wikipedia page is that?

Date: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 16:53
User: Poks
Comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_metal_bands

Date: Friday, November 13, 2009 21:50
User: Adrian
Comment: Tell you what, I'll swap you a Lightforce LP for those other albums you owe me (Greg Howe + Vinnie Moore). ;-)

Date: Monday, November 16, 2009 07:37
User: Lach
Comment: Yeah, I've still got them. I should drop them off sometime because I'll be moving house in Jan, don't want to misplace them.

Well, I've learnt something new today, on facebook you can't "like" a comment if you're leaving a comment on someone's status. I wonder why they left that little tidbit of functionality off?

At rehearsal last week Mike called me "Rocklan", which was quite amusing. He was trying to say Lachlan, but was looking at Ricky, so it came out as Rocklan. Then he said "are you going to be ok drivine home?" which I laughed at but now that I think about it was quite a nice thing to say, because I was rather tired. And driving when you're tired can be quite dangerous. A friend of mine half fell asleep while driving and drove into the back of someone once. BTW, I edited Ricky's wikipedia page to add our band Toehider.

So as a result I didn't do much today, because it's brothers birthday, and I wanted to enjoy the night out. I bought him a big enormous saucepan for his birthday, which I believe can hold 10 litres! There was a 12 litre sice saucepan but it was ridiculously huge, so I went with the 10 litre one. I also thought that a biggg saucepan like that would be called a pot, but it was labelled saucepan on the box. So there you go.

It was Darrell's going away dinner last night, because he's going to Africa again for another 3 months. So I'm extra tired today, but I haven't done much so it's been ok. Except for swelter in the heat.

Yesterday I did screw a new drawer into the church's PA rack, I haven't done that before. The bolts that you have to clip into the side are very hard to get in, I tried for 20 minutes until I realised that I couldn't do it by hand. So I called a mate and he confirmed that you do actually need pliers. So I then went to a house inspection at 4pm which was good, but the Mrs didn't really like it. So then I went home, grabbed the pliers and a hammer for good measure, and went back to the church and got the tricky things in without even needing the pliers, but the hammer was helpful. Then I screwed in the drawer, and now we can lock up our microphones + laptop, so that they're not stolen by someone. And then it turns out that I was doing sound this morning at church anyway, and I could use the new drawer to take out the radio mike! Which I did, and it worked great.

The music was a bit average, way too many old songs for me. I'm really starting to get sick of it, what's wrong with a lot of loud and rocking Hillsong? Maybe I'll turn pentecostal, that would be great. I've tried introducing new songs into church but I think there's too many old people there and it's just too much of a massive transition. And why force them to change anyway? They enjoy it, it's part of what they like and who they are, so I might as well solder on. And then iconically the sermon was on "why do you come to church?" but he never really touched upon the music topic, which is a pretty big deal to me. Lately I've stated wondering about whether God likes the idea of having so much music in the service and if we've made it a bit of an idol, but after reading a lot of the old testament there's so many examples of people worshipping God by playing instruments and singing and making a racket that I think he totally digs it.

Direct Link Tags: birthdays, church music, saucepans and pliers.

Amazing Melbourne drummer Glenn Roche was on the new Inventors last night and won! He's a great drummer too and a cool guy.

Direct Link Tags: The Roche Wrapper!

Ok, I'm not much of a fan of Lord Of The Things, chiefly because I never know who anyone is, where they're going and why they're going there. Bumblebeer and ozlemear and dwarfs and bridges of squawk and all that. It's just too confusing. But either way, you have to respect this cartoon. Amazing.

Direct Link Tags: lord of the rings timeline..

Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 19:30
User: GGBlog
Comment: 12 Angry Men ... classic (just 12 guys locked in a jury room for the whole play/movie)

Lyrics:

Metal Metal Metal, is falling on my steel
Icy cold and iron hot, the world before me kneel
I bring to you a metal hymn, perhaps a metal carol
A plethora of steely treats, there's metal by the barrel
There's leather in my metal on my chopper made of fire
(It's a chopper/valkrie hybrid) blasting through a metal pyre
I bare the weight of metal, as I'm loaded with the might
No-one dare to challenge me, I've already won the fight

We play for for sorcery, and magic, and wizards and pain
We play for couldrens, and demons and souls die in vain
We play for Satan, vikings, axes, fire, volcanos, muscles, death....
...but mostly metal.

My index is extended, oww and my pinky too.
Denim, spikes and patches, chains and leather through and through.
I signed my name in blood it made me feel a little woozy!
Coz when your starving for the metal then beggars can't be choosy.
We live for warlords, and victory, and tattoos and mead
We live for dragons and Odin and spreading our seed
We live for hammers, solos, boots, moustaches, armies, blood and sweat....

...but mostly metal....
...metal....
...metal.... AHHHH!!!
..METAL! GO!

I'm going mad with metal, all I see is metal skies
The water runs with metal and without it I will die
The mountain's made of metal and there's metal in the hills
I've changed my name to metal, just call me 'Metal Mills!'

I'd really love to stay and chat, about my metal story
But it's here that I must leave you on my path of metal glory
I swore my soul to metal, but it's getting hard to tell
Just really where I'm headed, to valhalla? or to hell?

We fight for honour and safety, electricity
We live for reference sections in the library
We fight for armour, captains, glass eyes, wenches, basements, Wagner, pants and gloves and buckles, glory, Castle Greyskull, welding, Giants, Egypt, oil and gnomes, and thunder, some more wenches, Krom and other things...
....but mostly metaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal.

Oh and by the way, apparently this song is in 5/4. I love this video!

Direct Link Tags: The most metal song in the world... video clip!

Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 19:38
User: GGBlog
Comment: love that video clip. well done! (not many would be able to slip Captain Haddock, He-man AND a guitar wielding Pokemon into the one clip but you have)

Toehider (Mike Mills!) will be releasing the most metal song in the world next Friday night, on Halloween. He's put up a bunch of clips of him recording the vocals, and they're very funny.




Check out this vibrato and his range. Love it.

Direct Link Tags: The most metal song in the world...

Does anyone use a password manager? I'm getting sick of typing in username + password into websites. It would be great to be able to sync laptop, work and home computer to have all website passwords and to be able to generate secure hard-to-remember passwords.

Direct Link Tags: Website password manager?

Date: Monday, October 12, 2009 13:53
User: Levi
Comment: c:\windows\notepad.exe + mental caesar cipher


Take that hackers!